THE more time you spend with Gwen Stefani’s “The Sweet Escape,” the more you appreciate the layered percussion and the way the sexy blonde belts her way through a barrage of styles from rap to schlock rock. But like her 2004 solo debut “Love. Angel. Music.

Baby.,” the follow-up suffers from an excess of studio style without any substantive melodies to make them memorable.

Take the album-opener “Wind It Up,” a girls-in-charge mishmashup that has Stefani alternating between “Lonely Goatherd” yodels snatched from the “Sound of Music” and clumsy monotone raps set to marching-band beats by Neptunes mastermind Pharrell Williams. It’s a mountainous disaster that makes you wish Rodgers never met Hammerstein.

While this opening tune makes Fergie’s “London Bridge” seem like genius, the album gets better as it goes on. Williams lends his talents to another four songs, with the insidiously titled “Yummy” being the tastiest as it grooves to a tight hip-pop weave.

The title track is another highpoint on the dozensong disc. While it relies on a single, repetitive hook to draw you in, its breezy girl-pop attack gives equal status to rhythm and melody.

If it wasn’t for Stefani’s good looks – which make Dre drool and Snoop howl – her style is basically Vanilla Nice. So even when she raps to a Swizz Beatz concoction like “Now That You Got It,” her flow is as edgy as a schoolgirl working one end of the double-Dutch rope.

Lyrically there’s plenty of nonsensical jibber-jabber used to make couplets rhyme, as well as a few autobiographical numbers, including “Orange County Girl” (about her) and “Wonderful Life” (which can be interpreted as an homage to No Doubt founder John Spence, who committed suicide in 1987).

Ironically for a solo album, Stefani is most winning when she works with her former lover and No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal. His three-song contribution – the Madonna-like “Fluorescent,” the lone love ballad “4 in the Morning,” and the swirling, circusinspired “Don’t Get It Twisted” – are the sweetest numbers on “Escape.” After being both her musical and romantic partner, Kanal has a synergy with Stefani the other producers can’t match.

Even Stefani seems to get that and has said this will be her last solo record (until her next one). She’ll be concentrating on No Doubt from here on.